Calvin Who/The End of the World
The End of the World was the second episode of the first season of Calvin Who. Episode 2:1 "So," grinned Calvin, spinning around the console with an evil look on his face. "Where to? Past or future?" "Future," Rose shot back. Hobbes cranked a handle. "We are now set for the twenty-sixth century! Yes, they really did get the hovercars working, although they do tend to blow up slightly if you go past 80 km/h." Rose shook her head, smiling. "You two think you're so great." "We are so great!" protested Calvin. "You know what, the twenty-sixth century is boring. Let's go..." he cranked the handle a few more times. "...to the new Roman Empire! It is now 2000 years in your future." "Boring," Hobbes disagreed. "I have a better idea." "Oh, do tell," Calvin encouraged him. Hobbes gave an Evil Genius Laugh (patent pending) and spun the handle faster than before. He hit the large button on the middle of the console with a flourish, and gestured towards the trampoline that served as the box's exit. "After you," he told Rose, with a mock bow. The three of them exited the box and found themselves in a hallway. Calvin dashed over to a shutter that seemed to be covering up something, and opened it. There was a large bay window, giving a view of... "The Earth," Rose realised with a start. "Welcome to the year 5.5/apple/26," Hobbes announced. "Yes, they really do start using fruits for years this far in the future," Calvin chimed in. "You really don't want to visit the 4/pear years. It gets really messy." "But what is this? Why are we here?" Rose arched an eyebrow. "This, Rose Tyler," Hobbes told her grandly. "Is the end...of the Earth." "What?!" "Computer?" Calvin asked his wristwatch. It beeped for a moment, and then a cool female voice began to speak. "Today is the day the sun expands to consume the Earth. You are currently on Platform One, where the party will begin in 15 minutes." "Wow," Rose summarized. "I know, right? Come on, let's go." They set off at a steady walk towards the main room, where the gathering would take place. "Shuttles five and six now docking. Guests are reminded that Platform One forbids the use of weapons, teleportation and religion. Earth Death is scheduled for fifteen thirty nine, followed by Drinks in the Manchester Suite," the Tannoy told them. "What do they mean by guests?" Rose asked. "Aliens, basically," Hobbes said casually. "The great and good are gathered here to... well, watch the Earth explode. For entertainment." "And when you say 'the great and good'..." "He means the rich people who basically have nothing better to do with their lives, yeah," Calvin finished. He threw open a wood-panelled door, and they walked into a bustle of colors and sounds. There was a group of tree-people, and some odd scaly things that were swishing their tails back and forth. Rose stared around, but her two companions seemed to take it in stride. "Go mingle," Calvin told her, giving her a slight push forwards. "This is your future, remember?" Hobbes started towards a bunch of tigress babes relaxing in the corner, with a lustful look on his face. Rose shook her head slightly, grinning. He was such a flirt. She wandered awkwardly around for a while, saying hello to the more human-looking of the aliens gathered. She grabbed a small thing that looked a bit like a canape, but smaller. And that was when she came face-to-face with the Face of Boe. At least, that was how he introduced himself. He seemed to know her from somewhere, although if Rose had ever seen him in her life, she would have recognised him by then. To paraphrase: the Face of Boe was a gigantic wrinkled head in a glorified jar. Go figure. Rose quickly made some sort of excuse to go away, not that the Face wasn't perfectly charming, but she was just weirded out a bit. The giving of gifts began. The tree-people gave her 'a clipping of their grandfather' and she tore out a little of her hair, and gave it to them as a 'clipping of herself'. Whenever someone offered her a gift, she accepted it and gave the same thing in return- a bit of her hair. By the end of the gift giving, she had received a sapling, a bagel, some spit to the face, some pretty colored stones that she put in her pocket, a pair of tweezers, and a ball. The ball was an odd, metallic thing that didn't actually absorb light. "And last but not least," the steward announced. "Our very special guest. Ladies and gentlemen, and trees and multiforms, consider the Earth below. In memory of this dying world, we call forth the last Human. The Lady Cassandra O'Brien Dot Delta Seventeen." The sliding doors opened, and in was wheeled a rack with skin stretched over it. At least, that was what it appeared to be. But the skin had eyes and a thin mouth. Which made it kinda weird. "Thank you, thank you," the 'skin' simpered. "I know, I know it's shocking, isn't it? I've had my chin completely taken away and look at the difference. Look how thin I am. Thin and dainty. I don't look a day over two thousand. Moisturise me. Moisturise me," she added to her assistants, who promptly sprayed her with a watery mist. Cassandra continued on with a long, ridiculous tangent about how ostriches breathed fire, and how iPods were massive boom boxes. She caught Calvin out of the corner of her eye, snickering at Cassandra's obliviousness. The Adherents of the Repeated Meme, who were some creepy guys in black cloaks, were giving the metal spheres to everyone there, including the steward, who was politely declining. The Adherents refused to listen to him, and gave him a sphere anyway. It was a bit too much for her, and so she decided to go outside to get some space. Quickly ducking through the heavy wood doors, no one saw her go. Except for Hobbes. He noticed, and tried to dart away after her. A tree-person blocked his path, and brandished a camera at him. No one noticed a metal sphere opening up, revealing a metal spider inside. Outside, Rose wandered over to a large window that was showing the scene outside. The Earth was sitting there, in a cocoon of blackness and stars, while the sun was drawing closer and closer. She fingered a small plaque, reading the inscription. "The National Trust has kept the Earth preserved," she read aloud. "for the last 2 million years. The funds for holding the Sun back, however, have expired. The gravity satellites surrounding the Earth will stop holding it back in 20 minutes." She blinked. "Wait, twenty minutes?" The plaque then changed its text to read '19 minutes' instead, and from there went on to display an ad for Intergalactic Xox Burgers. "Ah." A clunking sound from down the hallway drew her attention, and a pretty blue skinned, black haired woman approached, carrying a toolkit in her hand. "Oh, hello," Rose said. "What's your name?" The woman smiled, and bent down near an air vent. "You have to give us permission to talk." "Oh. I, um, give you permission to talk?" The woman began to remove the metal grating from the vent. "Thank you, miss. I'm Xandra. I won't be long, don't worry. Just have some maintenance to carry out, then I'll be on my way." Rose sat down against the wall. "What sort of maintenance?" "The Face of Boe has a glitch in his suite, he's not getting any hot water." "I met the Face a while back," Rose mused. "Huh. So there's still plumbers?" "Well, I certainly hope so, otherwise I wouldn't be here. Where are you from, miss, if you don't mind me asking?" "Oh!" Rose started. "I'm not from here... I come from a long way away. A really long way. I just came along with these two people. I don't even know them that well. I hardly know them at all. What am I doing with them?" She stood up, still lost in thought. "I guess you need to get back to your job, then. I might see you around." She walked off down the hallway. "Thank you, miss!" called Xandra from where she was working. "Not a lot of people give me permission to talk. You're very kind." She peered down into the dark air vent. "Now, what have we got here?" She could hear a faint scuttling noise coming from down the passage. A red light danced randomly in the darkness, and a metal spider came through. "Oh, hello!" Xandra exclaimed. The spider did not reply. "Do you want to get a spot reserved for yourself?" The spider only scuttled closer, followed by a whole lot more of its kind. "Oh, you brought friends!" This was followed up by the spiders, not looking so cute anymore, dragging her into the ventilation tunnel and away. No one heard her screams. Rose sat in the gallery, gazing over a panoramic view of the Earth. It was so very close to collapsing. Hobbes came up quietly behind her, and Rose acknowledged his presence with a single head nod. "Hard to believe, isn't it," he mused. "Millions of years of work and innovation, and all of it has led to this-" he gestured at the sun. "-the Earth. Being destroyed." Rose made a noise that could have been affirmative. There was silence. "Who are you?" she suddenly burst out. Hobbes raised his eyebrows. "Who are you two?" "We told you. I'm Hobbes, he's Calvin. We travel." "But how come you're a tiger? And why is a six year old saving the world?" Hobbes laughed dryly. "It's what we do, basically. It's our job, except we don't exactly get paid." Rose took her phone out of her pocket, and fiddled around with it a bit. No signal. It wasn't as if she expected there to be one, but... "Here," Hobbes sighed, taking a water pistol from his satchel. "Give me that for a moment." Rose allowed him to take her phone. The tiger aimed the water gun at it. There was a puff of smoke, and it turned into a hard drive with an interface. Hobbes began typing into it. "With a bit of jiggery pokery..." "Jiggery pokery." Rose folded her arms. "Is that some kind of technical term." "Yup," he replied, still fiddling. "I came top of the class at jiggery pokery. What about you?" "Nah, I failed hullabaloo." Hobbes finished up what he was doing with the phone-turned-hard drive, and, with another flick of the water gun, turned it into a phone again. He handed it back to her. "Here. You can now call anyone in the world at any time, as long as you've got the phone number." "Seriously?" Rose hit the speed-dial number for her mum, and listened for a moment. "Mum?" Pause. "No, I'm fine. Absolutely fine. Top of the world." She grinned slightly. Another pause. "I might be a bit late coming home, that's all." Pause. "Love you." She hung up. Hobbes was grinning wildly, and he raised his arms, as if to say 'how about that?' "I just called my mum from the future," she told him, slightly shocked. "She's been dead for millions of years." "Oh, how morbid. I give you a universal mobile, and all you can think of is how dead your mother is currently." He got up. "Well, back to the party. Apparently Calvin's discovered something he thinks we should know. Plus, I've got to return the Transmogrifier Gun before he notices." "You stole it?" "I prefer the term 'liberated'." "Hobbes! Slimy-Girl-Known-As-Rose!" Calvin ran towards them. "Guess what I just found out?" "Oi!" protested Rose. "I'm not slimy!" "You are," assured Calvin. "There's been a murder on board." Rose gasped, and Hobbes's face hardened. "Who?" "The steward." "Cause of death?" Hobbes questioned. "Apparently sun radiation poisoning, his sun filter was down. And look what I found in his room!" Calvin was holding a metal spider between his thumb and forefinger. Rose snapped her fingers together a couple of times. "I've seen those before! Just out of the corner of my eye!" "They're all over the Platform," Calvin informed her. "So... split up?" Rose ventured. "You read my mind. Hobbes and I will go this way, you go that way, question the guests, meet back here in 15 minutes, any more and something's gone wrong." "Gottit." Rose gave them the big thumbs-up. Hobbes and Calvin wove their way through the crowd, and Rose decided to go to Lady Cassandra, the so-called Last Human. "That didn't go well," Rose quickly decided, strolling away happily from Cassandra. She had, in the space of 5 minutes, insulted the lady, found out that she had had over 300 operations, none of them at all appealing, insulted her some more, called her something inappropriate for this fanfiction, and walked out. Cassandra had given her some dirty looks from across the room, but Rose payed them no heed, and decided to find a certain boy and tiger to see if they had found anything more interesting. "Hiya, Slimy Girl," Calvin said by way of greeting. "You'll never guess what we worked out five seconds ago." "Do tell." "We found a way to make this little guy-" he shook the metal spider he was still holding. "-show us who his owners are, using the Transmogrifier Gun. Attention, everyone!" he yelled to the room. Everyone turned to look. Calvin had quite a loud voice for such a young boy. He placed the spider on the floor, and zapped it with the object that looked quite a bit like a water gun. It flickered into the image of a frog, and hopped a few steps, before changing back into a spider, and scuttling over to the Adherents of the Repeated Meme. Which were, you know, the creepy guys in black cloaks. Hobbes walked over and peered at the Adherents. "Calvin," he requested. "What, exactly, is a Repeated Meme?" Calvin relayed this to his wrist watch, which whirred gently. "A repeated meme is an idea, a thought," it told him in its cool voice. "I thought so," remarked Hobbes, ripping of the leader's cloak to reveal an empty shell. It was basically wire and a battery, hooked up to voice box. "Now, I wonder who their controller is...?" Every single person in the room turned to look at Cassandra. She giggled. "Oh, you've figured it out, you clever boys and girls. The sun filters will go up, and this lovely, lovely space ship will be fried. I was going to use the deaths of the assembled elite to generate profit from their companies to finance my operations," she began. "but... I can still do that." "Oh?" Hobbes waved the Transmogrifier Gun at her. "Oh, yes." And with that, there was a loud ZAP. Cassandra, the last Human, had teleported away. Despite the fact that no teleporters were allowed. There was a long silence. "Well, that complicates things," grumbled Calvin. "Rose, are you coming with us?" There was no reply. "Rose?" He turned on the spot, 360 degrees. Rose Tyler had disappeared. "Seriously? You had to insult the person who is responsible for the latest plot on our lives. Of all the times... Hobbes? We have a human to rescue." And the duo dashed out of the room. Episode 2:2 Rose woke in a room. A big, spacious room with not much in the way of furnishing, except for a small table at one end, and a note of lined paper, saying, 'bye, bye!' with a smiley face. She groaned. "Of all the people I had to insult..." "Sun filter rising," interrupted a computerized voice, and her eyes widened. "Oh no." She raced to the door, which was, predictably, locked. She banged on it for a moment, before giving up, and racing to pick up the table before the sun burnt it up. A small sliver of pure white light slid up the window, and began to creep over the floor, sizzling as it did. Rose chose not to look at it, and instead began to bang on the door with the table. All she succeeded with this was splintering the table into pieces. "Hobbes?" she called. She could hear the pounding of furry feet on the floor, followed by someone yelling- "she's in here!" "Rose?" Hobbes asked. "You okay?" "I would be, if there wasn't the fact that deadly sun rays are about to burn me up?" "Is that so?" The now-familiar zapping of the Transmogrifier Gun reached her ears, and the computer said, quite calmly, "Sun filter descending". And then, just as quickly, it told the room at large, "Sun filter rising". "All taken care of, huh," Rose said sardonically. "Working on it, working on it," Calvin told her through the door. What followed was a ping-pong battle of "Sun filter rising" and "Sun filter descending", and Rose was becoming slightly worried that she was never going to get out of the room. Maybe she would get fried. Or maybe not. She sat down, leaning heavily against the door- still closed- and pulled the tree sapling out of her pocket. "Hello," she greeted it. "I'm Rose. That's a type of plant. We might be related." "You're talking to a plant," came Calvin's muffled voice. "Well, if you'd just hurry up..." "We're on it," Hobbes assured her. There was a grunt, and a crash, then an electrical buzzing, followed by a loud ZAP. The sun filter stopped in the middle of a "Sun filter descending" and stayed there at halfway. Rose breathed out a sigh of relief. "What did you do?" she asked. "We jammed the computer system," Hobbes informed her. "But we can't get you out." "Can't you use the Transmogrifier Gun thing?" "Actually, you're right. We can." There was a ZAP, and the door became a movie poster for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II. Rose examined it quickly, before brushing past it to greet Calvin and Hobbes. "Awesome sauce," Calvin grinned, rubbing his hands together. "Now, I believe we had a talking trampoline to capture?" CRACK. The three of them looked up simultaneously. "Sun filter rising," declared the computer system all over the Platform. "Oh, that is not good..." hissed Hobbes, beginning to back away down the hallway. "The spiders must be bringing down the gravity satellites already." "What should we do?" Rose was beginning to panic slightly. "Reset the manual shields," Calvin told them grimly. "Computer, bring up the schematics for Platform One." His ever-present wristwatch whirred, and a slowly rotating hologram rose from it. "We're here," Calvin explained tersely, jabbing a finger at a red cross. "and we need to get to the engines, which are here at the green cross." Hobbes and Rose nodded. "Let's go," he growled, closing off the hologram. "Yes, sir." Rose saluted. They dashed off along the corridor, Calvin pointing out the directions to go. They paused for a moment at a large, metal bound door. Calvin zapped it with the Transmogrifier Gun, and it turned into a bunny rabbit. A really tiny one. Rose scooped it up, and placed it in her pocket, next to the sapling. And they continued on. Soon they came into a room with pillars dotting across a large cavern. And the pillars didn't look exactly natural either. Neither did the raging lava covering the floor at the base of the pillars. "Lava is not supposed to be on a spaceship," Calvin protested. Hobbes shrugged. "Probably Cassandra's fault," he deduced. "But there's only one thing we can really do here." "What?" Rose asked. "Transmogrify," he grinned. With three quick ZAPS, Calvin and Hobbes became falcons, and Rose became a bat. They flew across the heat struck area, and when they had reached the other side, Hobbes turned them back into their original forms. "WHY the HELL did you turn me into a BAT?" she stormed. Hobbes shrugged, and Calvin just grinned. "We need to keep moving," he urged her. She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, and growled ferally. "Okay, okay! I'm sorry! I'll get you a dress or something!" They continued on down a long metallic hallway in complete darkness. The only source of light was at the very end of it, and it was a tiny pinprick. "Aren't you not supposed got into the light?" Hobbes asked conversationally. "Well, can you hear your dead ancestors calling out to you?" "I can't even REMEMBER my ancestors." "You should be fine." At this point they had reached the light, which turned out to be sitting on top of a slightly raised platform. And beyond the platform was... "Oh, damn," Rose gulped. It was a complex array of whirring fan blades, with no discernable way through. The only thing that could possibly help them was, apparantly, a small button inset into the wall. Calvin pressed it experimentally. The fans slowed down, and stopped entirely. "Hot dog!" he cheered, and let go of the button, making as if to go through the fan-lined area. As soon as he released the pressure, the fans began again, and he jumped back hurriedly. After a bit of experimenting, it appeared that the fans only stopped when someone was holding the button down. Which left them with a problem. "Who's going to be the one that stays behind?" Calvin asked them all. "Not me," Hobbes quickly declared. Calvin nodded an affirmative, and pointed at Rose. "You, then." "No way!" she exclaimed. Calvin pouted. "Why not? You'll be the safest out of all of us- you won't be killed by giant fans, and you won't have to confront Cassandra." "Oh yeah?" She pointed down the corridor. Lava was slowly but steadily creeping towards them. There was a slight moment of silence. "Okay, maybe you will get killed, then." "What are we going to do, you moron!" she screamed. Calvin thought for a moment. "Give me the rabbit!" he demanded. "What rabbit?" "The one in your pocket!" Rose reached into her pocket and pulled out the fluffy white bundle, and handed it quickly to him. He drew the Transmogrifier Gun from his pocket and placed the bunny directly over the button, so it held it down and made the fans stop. "There's not enough power in the gun for a full molecule change, but if I change the basic structure..." The gun ZAPped the rabbit. Its muscles stiffened, and it turned into granite. The fans were still off. "Go, go, go!" Hobbes urged her, and they dashed down the aisle of fans as quickly as they could, outrunning the lava by far. Rose felt a slight flicker in her vision, and for a moment they were in the desert, surrounded by creatures of nightmares, but then they were back in the bowels of Platform One, and she dismissed it as unimportant. At the end of the corridor, a small electronic device was lying, discarded, on the ground. Calvin snatched it up, and stared at it for a moment. "Teleport," he diagnosed, and began pressing buttons. It beeped. "Hold onto my arm," he directed. Rose and Hobbes did so, and the world dissolved around them. They staggered to their feet in a large, extravagantly decorated room. "I wasn't entirely sure that would work," admitted Calvin sheepishly. Rose and Hobbes glared. He shook his head. "Okay, I'll make it up to you later." Footsteps outside. Without making a sound, they all dived for hiding places. Calvin hid himself in the gap between the couch and the metal wall, and Rose rolled under the tablecloth for the work desk. She didn't get to see where Hobbes had gone, and so assumed that he must have done a good job, because at that moment the sliding door opened, and Cassandra rolled herself in. "Oh, you should have seen their faces," she laughed, presumably into a communications device. "The darlings never knew what hit them. None of them escaped." Calvin stood up from behind the couch, and Rose rolled out and jumped to her feet. Cassandra paused. "Oh." "Yes, exactly," Calvin replied. "Wait. where's that tiger of yours?" she demanded. "On the light," he said casually. Hobbes dropped, flailing, onto Cassandra's frame, and Rose chanced a look upwards. The light was tiny, not big enough to hold Hobbes at all. "How does that work?" she asked. Calvin shrugged. "TV contracts." There was an awkward pause while everyone tried to figure that out. While everybody was distracted, Hobbes took the opportunity to grab the teleport. With a massive ZAP, they were back on Platform One. The heat was sweltering, and Cassandra gasped from the pressure of the heat waves. "Now you know how it felt to the steward," Hobbes told her. Cassandra's thin skin was already beginning to crack from the heat. "Moisturise me," she said in a small voice. Her skin was billowing and flexing in the heat. Calvin shook his head. "Do something! She's going to die!" cried Rose. Calvin remained impassive. "She should've died centuries ago. She was only delaying the inevitable." With one last cry, Cassandra, the Last of the Humans, was gone. Her only remains were ashes that quickly blew away. Platform One was collapsing. "Quick, to the Time Machine!" Hobbes yelled. And they were running again. Always running, reflected Rose with the hint of a smile. "The Earth is gone," Rose realised, suddenly. They were back in the Time Machine. "The Earth is gone, and nobody saw it go. They were all..." "Mmm," agreed Calvin, working at the console. "That's the problem with humans. We're all so busy, always wanting to be at the right place at the right time, but...more often than not, we're always late. I wish I was a tiger." "Can't you use your Transmogrifier Gun?" "Only works for an hour or so at a time. Besides, last time I tried it, it was slightly disappointing." "How so?" Calvin immediately clammed up, and Hobbes snickered. "Okay, you don't have to tell me. So, where next?" Hobbes moved over, and hit a few buttons. They stood in the middle of busy London, taking in the sights and smells. "I think we all needed that," Hobbes sighed, and the other two agreed. Just the knowledge that, somewhere, sometime, Earth existed was a great comfort to them all. They walked a short distance to a park bench, and sat down. If anyone had looked over at that moment, all they would have seen was a teenage girl, and a younger boy, perhaps her brother, with a toy tiger. "So, where do you come from?" Rose asked eventually. "America," Calvin answered shortly. He didn't seem inclined to give any more details, and Hobbes took over. "Our home town is trapped in a time loop," he sighed. "It's why Calvin is perpetually six. He figured it out about ten relative years ago, and we built the Time Machine so we could escape." "Doesn't anyone miss you?" "No. We've got a duplicate of us back there, and besides," he gave her a pained smile. "I don't think anyone would miss us anyway." There was a long silence between the three. "You know what..." Rose began. "I think... I think..." She paused. "I think I need- chips!" Her nose caught the smell of some freshly baked London chips. Calvin caught onto the thought, and jumped up. "Great idea!" Pause. "...for a slimy girl." Rose laughed and elbowed him in his ribs, standing up as well. "Come on, I can see a place. It's called..." she squinted. "...the Malo Lupo. Wonder what that means." "No idea. I'm not Google Translate or something." They walked off, chattering happily. "...who's paying?" "Not me. Dad won't give me allowance." "Fine, you cheapskate. I will... if you'll let a slimy girl pay, that is." "Oh, just this once, then."